QOTW: The Passing of the Grey Company Results

Lights went out in house and hamlet as they came, and doors were shut, and folk that were afield cried in terror and ran wild like hunted deer. Ever there rose the same cry in the gathering night: ‘The King of the Dead! The King of the Dead is come upon us!’

Bells were ringing far below, and all men fled before the face of Aragorn; but the Grey Company in their haste rode like hunters, until their horses were stumbling with weariness. And thus just ere midnight, and in a darkness as black as the caverns in the mountains, they came at last to the Hill of Erech.

Passing of the Grey Company Stats

Groups registered: 12
Total attempts: 26
Most attempts: 10
Average attempts per entry: 2.2

Total number of wins: 16
Win-rate: 62%

Average opinion on the quest: 3.4

Campaign Mode

For this quest in campaign mode there are two things to shoot for: ending the quest without a copy of Overcome by Fear attached to your threat dial, and defeating the Army of the Dead. Everyone who logged a response avoided the burden and unlocked the boon. Good job everyone!

Achievements

Here are the two achievements we had for this quest:

Swift Shadows

Complete the scenario where at least 1 player has a threat below 40.

I’d Never Hear the End of It

Complete the scenario without removing a copy of Overcome by Fear from any player’s threat dial.

Only one person got an achievement. If more people were playing in standalone as opposed to campaign mode, we probably would have seen some people unlock the “I’d Never Hear the End of It.”

Encounter card Opinions

With four votes, the favorite encounter card for this quest was Trysting Place. It doesn’t have too nasty of an effect, and the travel effect can actually be helpful to pull out some of the enemies with When Revealed effects without them getting to trigger those effects.

The two cards to appear on both the favorite and least-favorite lists were No Turning Back, and The Way is Shut. Each of these are interesting treacheries that get at the core conceit of this quest: they each offer a choice of two negative effects, one of which is to attach a set aside copy of Overcome by Fear to your threat dial. Very interesting encounter design!

The winner of least favorite card, with five votes, was The Way is Shut. In a quest where you want to keep your threat dial clear of Overcome by Fear and go through the quest as quickly as possible, either choice here is bad. And it has surge! And peril!

Cool moments that happened during the games

Flew through it. With X on stage 2 being my threat, it really felt like I needed to quest hard before that became an unreasonably high number. Fortunately, I drew a Gandalf after knocking off overcome by fear from my threat dial, so his willpower and threat reduction helped me along.

We loved traveling to Trysting Place and fetching a Faithless Dead (dodging the when revealed) and frying it with Aragorn

I ran into a few tricky questing turns where a few allies departed before the silvans got back some bouncing events to hand and I kept drawing whispers in the dark. Treebeard, equipped with UC and Hands of a healer, was then a godsend making the last willpower to be able to keep traveling to new places. (And yes, please imagine the tree with healing hands on the end of the branches, preferably with mickey mouse-gloves 😉 )

I ended at 47 threat. Other than an early Elrond’s Counsel I could not find any threat reduction, so I had to rush it. Fortunately, Banner of Elendil, Silver Circlet, and Celebrían’s Stone all helped with the quest push. With Grimbeorn and Aragorn armed to the hilt, combat was no problem and the Army of the Dead were easily vanquished.

This was the first game all saga I didn’t grab The Storm Comes with Thurindir. I went with Double Back this time. Eowyn took care of the Army of the Dead the round it entered play.

Aragorn was lucky enough to be gifted the Banner of Elendil and Sword That was Broken from my Burglar’s loot deck, so willpower was such a non-issue.

My ent deck got eliminated by end of round threat reduction right after dumping a ton of willpower on Stage 2B. Their elimination lowered the quest points needed to progress, so I went to 3A at the end of that round. My fellowship deck took on some big threat gains from Army of the Dead’s attack and other effects, but I managed to win with 48 threat on the dial, Army of the Dead in the victory display, and no Overcome by Fears.

Decklists used

Mildly Thematic Fellowship https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21494

Spiregins, Galadriel, Thranduil + Treebeard, Tacowyn (tihi), Mablung (the moneymaker)

Grimbeorn Arwen Gildor Three Hunters (Grimbeorn’s Path)

Beregond, Gandalf, Legolas and Denethor, Eowyn, Galadriel, Thurindir https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21321/birdmanssagafellowship-qotw

QotW Does the Sagas! https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20652

Burglar’s Turn and Woodmen: https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/20726

https://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/21214 (with threat reduction cards from sideboard)

This week we get to unleash the Army of the Dead that we just earned upon the corsairs of Umbar who have invaded Gondor. This will be another quest where you will want to go as quickly as possible. Once you have completed your playthroughs of the quest, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/M9KZqhzncJ7fhR6H8

If you are using the quick start for campaign mode, either because you didn’t get a chance to play all the quests before this one and still want to play campaign mode, or because you want to use the community’s shared campaign pool, this is what your campaign pool looks like going into The Siege of Gondor:

Boons: Old Bogey-stories, Ho! Tom Bombadil!, Each player may choose one of the permanent boons from A Knife in the Dark, Sting, Mithril Shirt, Glamdring, Anduril, Each player may choose one of the Gift boons from Breaking of the Fellowship, each player may choose one of the Skill boons from The Uruk-Hai, Palantir of Orthanc, Brace of Coneys, Army of the Dead
Burdens: The Ring Draws Them, Panicked, Overcome by Grief, Ill Fate, each player gets 1 copy of The Searching Eye, A Heavy Burden
Harad Enemies: 1x Oliphaunt

And for achievements for this quest, this is what we have: